What happens when the minority becomes the majority?

Gurpreet Singh is a radio host on Radio India in Surrey, where he does a call-in talk show.Photo by
Jason Payne

When Gary Thandi’s parents settled in Campbell River in the 1970s, they had to integrate. There weren’t enclaves of South Asian settlers in B.C. at the time, so they quickly adopted B.C.’s mainstream culture and language.

Thandi — a Surrey resident and social worker who has lived in a variety of Lower Mainland neighbourhoods — believes increasingly concentrated ethnic enclaves in B.C. can lead to negative social outcomes.

That’s why in his own family’s case, and among other like-minded community members, there’s an effort to interact with other races.

“Over the last decade, people can just come and blend within their own community, which can be wonderful, but also very limiting,” Thandi said. “It’s great you can go to your doctor without an interpreter, but it limits your world, and what Canada is all about.”

Thandi pointed to heavily South Asian populated areas like Newton and Whalley, where there is social pressure — especially among youth, he says — to avoid contact with other races.

According to Statistics Canada, more than 25 per cent of Surrey’s population is South Asian, with over 75 per cent concentration in several areas.

Thandi adds that from previous experience as a probation officer in Abbotsford, he saw examples of harmful ethnic isolation. Unskilled labourers were misused by business owners within the South Asian community.

The bosses wouldn’t hire English speakers because those people would be more likely to know their rights in terms of wages and employment standards.

“The labourers (can be exploited) because they are treated like they are interchangeable,” Thandi said.

Gurpreet Singh — a veteran journalist who hosts a call-in show at Surrey-based Radio India — has documented cases of “reverse racism” in which South Asians target other races, especially aboriginals and Africans.

But he stresses that the reasons ethnic enclaves develop are complex and must be understood before jumping to conclusions.

“You can’t simply speak on the basis of one or two incidents where white people have been discriminated against by South Asians,” Singh said. “Why South Asians or any community live in a ghetto is a very complex question. Many find it hard to integrate because of their own drawbacks, language and working skills.”

Singh and others in the South Asian community say it is important to understand there are positive aspects of ethnic enclaves.

Recent immigrants can use ethnic support networks to find work and live comfortably upon arrival, avoiding the negative effects of social isolation.

They can gradually match language ability and job skills to the demands of Canadian society. And as much as some South Asians want to push beyond ethnic neighbourhood comfort zones, Singh says, a feeling that they are seen as second-class citizens sometimes pushes them back.

“When we discuss issues like racism on my show, a lot of people show their willingness to move into the mainstream, but they don’t see hope out there,” Singh said.

“The people feel there shouldn’t be discrimination against anyone, and they talk about their own challenges.”

Perhaps even more than Surrey, Richmond — with its surging Chinese-immigrant population now the majority — has become a hot spot of debate over whether English speakers face discrimination and exclusion.

Nearly 60 per cent of Richmond residents reported a non-official language as their mother tongue in 2011. About the same ratio are defined as immigrants, the highest proportion of any city in Canada. The most commonly reported ethnicity in Richmond in 2006 was Chinese, with 78,790 people, or 45 per cent of the population. That was up from 34 per cent in 1996.

And near the north end of Richmond’s No. 3 Road, statistics suggest the Chinese population is at 80 per cent and growing.

A group of “longtime” Richmond residents spoke out against the increase in Chinese-only signage this year, gathering 1,000 signatures to petition city hall to step in. The story generated huge media attention. But efforts to enact a bylaw guarantying official Canadian languages on signs were rejected by Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie and his council.

Petitioners Kerry Starchuk and Ann Merdinyan continue to raise the alarm, though. Starchuk says it seems Chinese-dominated signs, businesses and marketing are spreading across Richmond, making her feel like an outsider in the community she grew up in.

“My neighbours don’t know the opportunity they have lost. They don’t know how it feels to have a multicultural community.”

After the controversial petition, some accused Starchuk of being racist. Mayor Brodie says the Chinese sign issue has been blown out of proportion by a small group of people, but he won’t label them.

“I won’t label anybody, and I certainly won’t label them as racist. I just believe the perception is different from the reality,” Brodie said in an interview. “There are many groups in Richmond, and any time a community is changing and growing there will be tensions between groups.”

In late September, six months after rejecting the petition, Richmond council slightly softened its position, adopting planning committee language that encouragesEnglish to be “prominently” featured on signs in the city.

The move fits in with other city initiatives meant to “address the perception and reality of racism,” in Richmond, according to internal memos. But the language adopted falls far short of a binding bylaw, and Starchuk and Meridian say they’ve seen similar gestures from the city before, and they haven’t halted the increase in Chinese language signs.

In the Fraser Valley, John Pook, an insurance business owner previously involved in a media firestorm with suggestions of “reverse racism” says that in hindsight, he would have done some things differently.

In the 2006 case, when a plaza on the Surrey-Langley border was purchased by a group of Asian businessmen, the leases of some longtime business owners were not renewed. Pook and others believed they were unwanted because they didn’t fit plans to turn the mall into an Asian-focused business centre. Pook’s human-rights tribunal racial discrimination case was dismissed.

“There is nothing discriminatory about seeking to serve an ethnic market, nor about doing so by marketing goods likely to appeal to that market,” the tribunal stated. “The complainants’ belief that they were discriminated against on the basis of race, however sincerely held, is not a sufficient basis to warrant this complaint proceeding to hearing.”

“I believe what we said was true, but we couldn’t prove it,” Pook said. “We would have done things differently, and I believe (the plaza owners) would have, too.”

Pook said efforts should be made to bridge cultures through communication and understanding.

“These incidents that come up, people just need to be better educated and recognize what they are doing from the other person’s perspective,” he said.

“Because, multiculturalism has added so much to our country. And we have incidents that makes us go back to ‘them against us.’ And that’s not what it’s all about.”

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